Alabama SB377

In anticipation of the practically inevitable Supreme Court ruling against marriage, the state senate of Alabama is considering legislation to do away with marriage licenses. I've been suggesting that something like this will be tried at some level, though I suspect it won't be especially widespread. Sympathy for "gay marriage" and against religious liberties have both been on the rise* in America, across the nation. The plan all along has been to force this issue on people, and in particular to force it on people who don't want to participate.

The latest on that front is is that participating is not enough--you must also practice correct-think. As Rod Dreher notes,

You understand, of course, that this is not about getting equal treatment. The lesbian couple received that. This is about demonizing a point of view, and driving those who hold it out of the public square. Just so we’re clear about that....

It does indicate, though, the next phase in the March of Progress. You must not only bake the cake, or arrange the flowers, or make the ring, you must hold the correct opinion when you do it.

A typically hateful commenter (from the other side) glibly replies,

"You people truly are unbelievably dense.

Do you not get that gay couples (and their family, friends, and fellow decent fellow American citizens) do NOT want your bigot products and services. We (all the above mentioned) don’t want to give you one dime. Period.

That is not the point....

So… put out your signs [and offer to cheerfully serve the gay community despite them]...Then watch as you’ve made your beliefs and feelings perfectly well known how your business crumbles, as not only gay people but a large swath of customers choose not to do business with those they know to be bigoted and engaged in efforts to harm their gay friends, family, and neighbors."

In any case, I do not know if this decision to cease offering marriage licenses is a workable solution--though I am in favor of the government getting out of the marriage business if marriage is to become meaningless. And, to the extent that civil marriages are dissoluble by divorce, and that they do not function for the purpose of procreation, and that they will now start to be expanded to include ever more types of partnerships, marriage has become civilly meaningless at best. So long as the government finds a way to recognize the actual rights of spouses (hospital visitation, joint ownership, etc), extended to non-spousal relationships or otherwise, fine, do away with civil marriage.

For better or for worse, the law is a teacher. It is best when the law teaches rightly, but the law has not been doing that for decades. This is basically just a continuation of that slide from teaching correctly about marriage, and so the law is not only not teaching well or flat out refusing to teach, it is in fact teaching lies. So, in that sense, having the law refuse to teach anything at all is a step in the right direction, albeit a very hesitating one (and one with some possibly bad complications).

An institution which should be the source of much good is becoming a source more of evil. The right thing to do is to redeem that institution; that action has failed. I suppose that the next best thing is to burn it down, which is going to happen anyway. It can hopefully be rebuilt, and correctly, in some distant future. I'm not one to stand by chanting "burn baby burn!" as civilization is engulfed in flames--but if burning it down is the wrong reaction to civilization as a whole, it is the right reaction to a Trojan Horse. And, tragically, that is what the civil institution of marriage has become.

This may not be the right solution, but in the end, it may be the only solution left, at least as far as the present civilization is concerned.

---
*Soon that will be "old" news, and the social justice brownshirts, will embrace the next (lock)step of "progress." They will then demand that the rest of us fall in as well. Or else.